Containment

[FIDO]

Monster by Skillet
“I feel like a monster…”

This was not supposed to be happening, not now and not ever, there was no way it was supposed to be happening.

Gabriel Conover stood watching the scene play out in front of him as it happened in fast brutal actions, nothing like he had ever seen, forever staying in his head like an HD movie some wacked out film director spent millions of dollars perfecting. Four people were on the ground tearing apart a man with nothing more than teeth and gripping hands like a pack of wild animals as they simply bit and clawed the poor unfortunate man, sending splatters of blood everywhere as bits of flesh and gristle found their way into the waiting mouths of four…creatures.

The screams from the man were abruptly cut off when one creature reached down and tore out the man’s throat with its teeth, severing the airway and several arties as the sounds of gurgling and tearing flesh reached his ears.

For a moment Gabriel stood wondering how this had happened and why it had to happen here, of all places as he reached into his backpack, fumbling past the water bottles, empty food wrappers and spare socks before he found what he was looking for and dropped the backpack in one smooth motion. The small .38 Smith & Wesson snub nose revolver seemed like a ridiculously small weapon as Gabriel leveled the two-inch barrel to line up perfectly with nearest creature that was still hunched over the dying man as he stood in the Weaver Stance to steady his aim. Once the sights lined up with his target, Gabriel gently squeezed the trigger like he was squeezing a sponge and watched with grim satisfaction that he hit the creature in the back of the head, blasting bits of brains out the frontal lobe as the bullet penetrated and went through, striking the leg of the dying man, who didn’t so much as feel it as it was because he had already gone into shock in a span of several seconds.

The report was loud enough to alert the other three creatures of his presence as he shifted to the left, aiming at the one with fresh blood running down its chin as he stroked the trigger again, feeling the little gun in his hands buck gently. The bullet struck it just above the left eyebrow as it dropped to the floor, causing the creature standing behind it too trip as Gabriel shifted his aim farther to the left before settling his sights on the next one, this one clearly female as he shot it through the center of the forehead before turning to look at the last creature.
It had regained its feet and was moving towards him, less than fifteen feet away as it stretched out its arms at him and it let out a loud wail that sounded like something an animal would make.

Not a human being.

He fired again and caught it in the face directly below the right nostril that caused it to flop backwards in a tangled heap, the round having gone completely through and shattering the Plexiglas window spanning from one wall to the other. The alarm was a shrill wail that was louder than the screaming people scattered around the room huddled in corners to get as far away from the creatures attacking the poor man in the middle of the floor as Gabriel slowly walked forward to look down at the dead man laying in a puddle of crimson blood steadily seeping across the white plastic set down on the floor.

Gabriel put a bullet in the man’s head before looking up to notice that several figures armed with submachine guns dressed in biohazard suits had entered the room through the only door and were aiming at anyone who moved. Six of them were covering the other thirty people scattered around the sterile observation room used to monitor newly arrived people for any signs of infection while two of the figures approached Gabriel slowly, never once taking their guns off him as he slowly flipped the revolver around so he presented it butt first to the nearest man.

Because of the alarm making hearing impossible, one of the men lowered the muzzle of the submachine gun down to point at the ground while the other man took three steps to his right, keeping Gabriel in his sights. Gabriel understood and looked down at the bodies before slowly dipping down and setting the gun on the floor, before slowly taking several steps away from the dead bodies, aware that two guns were leveled at his chest as he sank to his knees several feet away from the bodies and laid down spread eagle.

A boot pressed into the back of his neck as both hands were pulled behind his back, a plastic zip tie was used to secure his hands behind his back before he was given a rough pat down and then pulled to his feet, a strong hand with a grip like a vise on his upper right arm pushing him in the direction of the door while the muzzle of a gun nudged him in the back. Gabriel walked slowly and didn’t bother turning around or even speaking as he was quickly walked from the observation room down the hall and then through another door that seemed like a pretty decent room, if it wasn’t for the fact he was forced to sit down in a chair and then for his hands to be zip tied to chair. In a way it was smart, in case he became one of those things, there would be no way for him to run at anyone with a chair getting tangled up in his legs and he wouldn’t be able to use his hands either.

The two men left the room and locked the door behind them, once Gabriel heard the sound of the dead bolt turning in the lock he actually felt safe compared to being in a room with thirty other people. This room was actually a cell with only one overhead light covered with a metal screen to prevent anyone from making a weapon out of glass from the florescent bulb, so that meant he was in some kind of police station, where he had no idea, but then again he didn’t care a whole lot where he was.

All he knew was that the chances of him making it out of here were slim at best now that several of those things had been in the same room as he had been and he was sure something would come from his action of having shot those four and the dead man. He could hear sounds of people passing him by in the hallway, kind of like Grand Central Station out there, but he didn’t care, nobody opened his door for what felt like half an hour before it did open.

One person entered the room, dressed in a biohazard suit, armed with a short shotgun and carried a clipboard, Gabriel watched as the person pulled a chair over from behind the door, setting it several feet away from him and then sat down.

“Your name?” the voice sounded like the person was attempting to speak through a Styrofoam cup, Gabriel couldn’t see the person’s face either, because underneath the giant suit visor was a black gas mask riot control officers wore.

“Gabriel J. Conover.” He sighed as he slumped into a more comfortable position in his chair as whoever was in the suit began scribbling on the clipboard.

“Date of birth, height and weight?”

“Does it really matter?” Gabriel asked as he noticed the shotgun was still balanced against the side of the chair, ready to rock and roll once the operator needed it, the person in the suit looked up and shrugged once, a gesture that was nearly hidden by the suit as Gabriel tipped his head back.

For several moments neither of them said anything before Gabriel lifted his head to look at the person still sitting there, pen in hand and shotgun leaning against the chair before he let out a deep sigh.

“What’s going to happen to me?” Gabriel waited several seconds before tilting his head back again to keep counting the holes in the ceiling tile.

“First we intend to see if you display symptoms of the virus, if not you will be transported to a holding station to await further instructions, the waiting limit is six hours and if you begin to display symptoms by then,” the person shrugged again, “you will be put down in a humane way and then incinerated, your family will be notified and that’s it.”

“Got no family, lost them all back in…Cascade Falls six days ago.” Gabriel sighed as he looked back at the person wearing the suit, no doubt a government official because they had not said anything, other than a list of questions no doubt committed to memory.

However the person sat up and leaned forward at the mention of the town, “Did you say Cascade Falls? As in the epicenter of this outbreak?”

“Yeah, it all started ten days ago when we started hearing reports of violence breaking out all over town after a train wreck happened sometime in the night, apparently it derailed because it was traveling to fast and went down a ravine not far from town, never did hear how it actually crashed.” Gabriel said as he shifted in his seat, “a couple days after that and a bunch of crazy people started popping up all over the place, like a strike was going on or some mob just decided to get whipped into a frenzy, avoided several areas of town for the first couple days and stayed home from school.”

“You said something about a train?” The person was scribbling furiously now with the pen and looked up at him, only the reflective lens staring back.

“It happened sometime last Thursday night, the local cops said around 11:40 AM it derailed right off the tracks and took a tumble down the ravine, sixteen tanker cars and two engines which is kind of strange once you thought about it, not one single car had markings on it and there was no logo on any of the engines.” Gabriel stopped talking when the person lifted a hand.

“You mean you saw them? You saw the train for yourself”

“Yeah, when it went down the ravine it was actually right next to the road, the tracks were on one side of the ravine and the highway ran along the other side, passed the wreck on my way to school the next morning, but the day after that school was closed for some reason, but at that time I really didn’t care,” Gabriel took a deep breath, “they had K-9 rescue units combing over the area looking for the conductor because there was signs that someone had been driving the damn train, but they never did find the guy.”

The person was clicking something on their belt and speaking softly, not loud enough for Gabriel to hear, but he assumed it was a walkie-talkie as he just sat there, hands cuffed behind his back to a chair before the door to his cell was thrown open.

Five people crowded into the tiny room, each one of them dressed in hazmat suits and armed with submachine guns as Gabriel watched them make a ring around his chair, one of them setting a stool down while the rest set up equipment. One of them set up a video camera mounted on a tripod facing directly at him and turned it on while Gabriel watched another figure open a large briefcase of sorts and pulled out a small box with a bunch of wires sticking out of it.

In a few seconds of complete silence they strung a wire harness around his chest, stuck a bunch of suction cups they had him lick to his head and clipped something onto his finger, during the entire time one of them moved behind his chair and kept the muzzle of the submachine gun rested against the back of his head to remind him not to do anything funny while the rest of them sat down. After testing the camera and setting a microphone on a metal stand within a foot of his face, three of the hazmat suits left, leaving the original questioner, one sitting next to the camera as the operator and the one sitting behind him with a gun to his head.

Gabriel had not made a single sound throughout the entire thing, which was over in less than a minute while the original person who had not moved the entire time balanced the briefcase on a stool, flipped a couple switches, scribbled something on the clipboard and tapped the microphone twice to see that it worked.

“Is your name Gabriel J. Conover?” The tone of voice suggested a straight answer as the speaker faced him again, camera blinking red as Gabriel sat there for a full minute in silence.

“Yes.”

“Did you live in Cascade Falls?”

“Yes.”

“Is everything you said about the train wreck true?”

“Yes.”

“Did you shoot the infected individuals in the observation room?”

“Yes.”

“How many were there total?”

“Four of those infected guys and the victim who was dead and about to come back in a couple of minutes.”

A moment of silence followed while the person asking the questions scribbled on the clipboard for a little bit while Gabriel craned his neck slowly to the side to made the crick go away, the gun barrel never moving.

“How did you smuggle a gun past security in the first place?”

“Didn’t really have to sneak it in, nobody frisked me or made me hand over the bag, so I figured that I would keep it to myself until I was given no choice.”

“Where did you get the gun from?”

“Picked it up off a dead body four days ago back in Cascade Falls, right after the community center had been overrun when I was hauling ass out of there, figured that it was better than a tire iron, so I grabbed it and it has saved my life a couple of times since then.”

“How did you know the infected were in the room?”

“What? As in did my spider sense start tingling? Didn’t really know until it was too late when they started eating that other guy, figured that they must’ve had a scratch or the bug from being around other people, a real nasty bite would only take a couple of minutes.”

“Could you explain that please?”

Gabriel sighed, “I’ve seen lots of people just turn because they got too close to one of those things and breathed in something, usually takes an hour or more after some coughing and puking is involved, you learn to see that pretty quickly, sometimes a small scratch or scrap from a fingernail or tooth will take awhile, but a real nasty bite makes anyone turn in only a few minutes.”

“Have you been bitten or scratched?”

That was the one question Gabriel could not answer and had a sinking feeling what would happen if he did answer that question as the person asking the questions slowly looked up, like it had just dawned on them what the answer was from the total silence.

“Please answer the question.”

Gabriel got a soft nudge in the back of the head as he sighed, “Right after getting away from the community center, one of those things jumped through a glass window and tackled me, bit me in the shoulder, not bad, but enough to cause some bleeding.”

Silence reigned for about five seconds before the questioner spoke again, “How did you treat it?”

“After leaving it alone for about two minutes I crawled into the back of an ambulance and patched myself up with some stuff I found, gauze and some sterile pads and then went to the nearest house so I could go to sleep after taking some Tylenol.” Gabriel shrugged back into his seat and waited for the shot to come, one that he knew was coming the moment he confessed, hopefully he wouldn’t feel a thing and wouldn’t hear the shot.

“May I see the bite?”

The question startled him, much more than hearing the gun go off, the pressure at the back of his head went away as he heard a soft click behind him, then something tug at his bonds before they fell away.

Gabriel slowly shrugged out his jacket and removed his shirt to reveal the untidy mess of bandages and dried blood all over his left shoulder as the pressure returned to the back of his head, the questioner nodded at him and Gabriel winced. Slowly he removed the bandages, which was easier than when he patched himself up all alone, feeling the scabs pull away with the gauze that always did when he had changed his bandages every day since he got bitten to avoid any bacteria from getting in there and causing some trouble.

The bite itself was located on the top of his shoulder, just a half circle on the front and another half circle on the back of his shoulder, right there on the shoulder socket. It wasn’t really that bad, just deep enough to break the skin and not tearing out any major arteries or veins, missing the tendons and shoulder muscles completely, because the one that bit him had a lighter jacket to chew through, since then Gabriel had never taken off the leather one he found in the house he hid in for two days. It wasn’t inflamed as bad as it had been a couple days ago, the swelling had gone down a lot and it wasn’t black and blue anymore, just that faded yellow after a bruise started going away after a couple of days.

For a full minute nothing made a sound in the cell as Gabriel gently dabbed at the blood running down his chest to hopefully allow scabs to form up quickly before he heard the same clicking sound as the questioner mumbled softly.

The door opened again, this time with two individuals dressed in white plastic suits instead of the bright orange ones, they also had no weapons either, but Gabriel didn’t get his hopes very high after watching one of them pull out a syringe from a small black bag. It had something in it and Gabriel knew he was about to go under, for a brief second he thought about attempting to overpower the guards, but quickly dashed that thought.

There was the one behind him with the gun still touching the back of his head, if there was some way in God’s creation he would be able to get the gun pointed away from himself, he would still have a shotgun to worry about and not to mention they would probably kill him before he got out of the cell.

“You’ll feel a slight prick.” The one brandishing the needle was advancing slowly, the other one in white had pulled an object off their belt, a stun gun from the looks of it, covering him with it as the one with the syringe stepped closer.

Gabriel turned his head away and forced himself to relax, tricking his mind into thinking that he was eight years old getting a booster shot and he would get a lollipop afterwards.

He felt the sting of the needle as the one removed it from his arm and stepped back, no doubt waiting for the drug to take effect as the room starting getting darker after several seconds, or had it been an hour since the needle had been pulled from his arm?

Looks like he wouldn’t be getting a lollipop after all as he let the darkness welcome him with open arms, at long last reality was no longer his biggest concern anymore.

[ForgeCorvus]

This is good, please continue

[kcor_77]

Yes more please

[Snapshot7.62]

Great start, awaiting moar!

[FIDO]

The Little Things by Danny Elfman
"Standing in my way, all the little things..."

Gabriel felt like his head was about to split open from the continuious pounding, like a deranged surgeon decided to play chopsticks with a jackhammer on his skull before attempting brain replacement surgery, everything hurt like Hell, which told him one thing.

He was still alive.

After what felt like eons, but was only minutes no doubt, Gabriel opened his eyes slowly, everything coming into focus with crystal clear quality as he stared at the ceiling above him, it looked different from his cell he had been questioned in before they had drugged him after hooking him up to a lie detector and asking a bunch of questions. It was coming back to him in bits and pieces, he gently srcatched the itch on his left shoulder, noticing at once there were fresh bandages over the bite as he slowly sat upright and had a better look around the room he was currently in. It looked like a hospital room, white walls and ceiling with only one door leading in or out, an IV stand next to the bed and a single chair against the wall next to the door, the flourescent lights above his head were dimmed low to avoid casting harsh light around the room, giving it instead a comforting blanket of shadows over everything.

The bite on his shoulder was a certified death sentence and yet he was still alive and feeling just a little bit woozy from whatever the drugs had been in his system, he looked around for a call button usually left next to patients and didn't see one, then he noticed that there wasn't a doorknob on his side of the door either. When he had been bitten that day, Gabriel found the nearest weapon he had and killed a few dozen zombies before crawling into that house where he woke up hours later still alive, so the nagging question of why he was still alive had been eating away at him for a long time already while hundreds of other people around him dropped dead to the ground with less grevious wounds, only to stand back up in a few minutes seeking something to eat.

After rubbing his shoulder and cradling his head in his hands for a few minutes, Gabriel got out of the bed, pulling the IV stand along with him as to not remove the needle taped into his arm as he went over and tried pushing open the door, but it didn't budge either. After some serious thought on if he should do it or not, Gabriel picked up the chair and swung it at the glass window next to the door, obviously meant for doctors or nurses to monitor him from outside the room with everything he had. The chair was metal and one of those heavy ones, not a cheap flimsy plastic one as he swung at the window again, happy to see spiderweb cracks appearing with each hit as he paused from swinging the chair to take a breather and rest his shoulder before giving the window another couple of hits.

The glass shattered and the smell finally hit him, so powerful he caused him to gag and nearly puke as he dropped the chair and staggered backwards from the stenchbefore hitting the bed. It was the stench of rot and death, nothing that was new to him as he gulped down a couple mouthfulls of stangant air before he pulled the IV needle from his arm and holding the gauze pad against the blood to let it staunch for several minutes before crawling through the window. Being dressed in a hospital gown that was exposed down the back to show his ass off to anyone standing behind him made things a little bit more difficult to crawl over the window ledge, but he used the chair to finish busting out the glass and threw the bed sheets over the ledge to protect him from any glass still in the frame as he gingerly placed his feet among the glass shards scattered over the floor, using his foot to lightly brush away a clear spot on the floor before putting all of his weight down. The hallway lights were still on as he carefully tip-toed his way past the minefield scattered all over the floor until he reached the first door and stuck his head inside to see if anyone was in there or if he could find anything of use before backpedaling out of the doorway, hand over his mouth.

He had no idea these things could do that to a person, but this ranked right up there with some of the worst shit he seen so far as he shuffled past the room splattered completely with blood, it had been a room with ten beds, a ward of some kind and it looked like every person had been torn to shreds and scattered around as he kept going.

After reaching the end of the hallway to the door marked STAIRS, Gabriel nudged the door open and nearly tripped over the body on the landing next to the door, for one horrible second he thought it was an infected until he noticed most of the head was gone from what looked like a self-inflicted gunshot wound from a semi-automatic pistol laying on the floor next to the body, a semi-circular chunk missing from the right forearm that explained why the individual had gone to such extremes. Gabriel picked up the weapon, feeling better with the heavy comfort of the gun in his hands as he dropped the magazine and racked the slide to clear the chamber before inspecting the gun closely for any damage.

It was a 9mm Glock-17 semi-automatic with six bullets left in the magazine, the one round in the chamber and after examining the body, three fully loaded magazines with seventeen rounds apiece in each and there was two empty magazines tucked away in a coat pocket. After cycling the action and dry firing the weapon once before slapping in a fresh magazine, racking a round in the chamber and flipping the safety off, Gabriel cast a glance at the dead body and decided not to attempt taking the clothes off it as he held the magazines in his left hand and had the gun out in front of him in his right as he slowly went downstairs. On the next landing he found bloodstained footprints leading into the main floor through what was left of the door that was hanging by a single hinge on the frame as the smell became even more foul if possible before Gabriel decided to press on, looking for some kind of employee lounge or locker room he might find clothes in. Bloodstainds covered the floor, high velocity blood splatter decorated the walls and ceiling in graphic detail as bits of flesh, bone and surely the muscle tissue ripped out of victims covered the floor, along with whole fingers, severed hands, spent shell casings from 9mm, .12 guage, .45 and 5.56mm were lightly sprinkled over the whole mess like an afterthought.

Gabriel was careful to glance into each door that he past to make sure nothing was going to jump out and attack him once his back was turned until he reached the front desk and spotted something that would help him, an overcoat draped over the back of a swivel chair behind the desk as he snagged it and shrugged it on, dropping the spare magazines into his left pocket as he could now hold a loaded magazine in his left hand, right hand resting on his left wrist, so that he wouldn't have to go fumbling for another magazine when he needed it as he went into a back office to look for anything else that might help him. He didn't find anything in the next three offices eitehr until he happened to come across a gym bag tucked under a desk filled with a change of clothes, a set of tennis shoes and a towel, so he put on the jeans and belt, then ditched the gown for the shirt and pulled on the tennis shoes after looking around for some socks.

Now fully dressed and armed, Gabriel dumped the rest of the stuff out of the bag and kept the coat as he left the office in search of food and water, stopping at a water fountain to take sips before looking around every few seconds to make sure nothing was going to get the drop on him. Nothing happened until he drank enough to slake his thirst before moving on. He found a vending machine that he broke with help from with a fire extingusher to get to the candy bars and snack food that he tore into right there in the middle of the hall without as so much as looking around until he snarfed down half a dozen Snickers and a bag of Doritos. He threw everything else into the bag hanging on his right shoulder and kept going, past the remnants of the lobby and out the front door of the hospital.

It was dark outside and looked like a warzone had erupted on the front lawn hours ago, dead and dismembered dead bodies were scattered around on the grass, most of them with shots to the head, others with crushed skulls and others with missing limbs that were not moving, while a great deal of them were what could only be desrcibed as crispy critters that were still smoldering. Several Hummvees with mounted machine guns, police cruisers, SWAT vans, cars marked FBI and several emergency vehicles were out in front of the hospital, the parking lot and front lawn being the perimeter around the building. Small fires burned on whatever fueled them, working street lights cast enough light around to add to the eerieness and several vehicles still had working lights, Gabriel cautiously stepped toward the vehicles, hoping on a hope that nobody would shoot him once they saw him looking around and armed with a gun, but no shouted orders or gunshots rang out, in fact nothing happened until he reached the vehicles.

Most of the vehicles were coated with blood like a rush of bodies had poured past them, enough spent brass covered the ground to make it difficult to walk without making a lot of noise as Gabriel searched for any weapons that would help him.

He scored big when he found a M4 rifle with enough empty magazines scattered around to give a horse a rupture and several cans of ammunition in the backseat of a Humvee that were loose rounds of 5.56mm as he lcoked himself inside the vehicle and sat there fumbling in the semi darkness handloading the magazines, double checking every so often to make sure he was loading the rounds the right way rather than loading them in backwards, which would screw him over so bad at the worst possible moment if that did happen. Slowly the bag sitting next to him began filling up with loaded magazines as the stack of empty magazines on the bench seat next to him dwindled down to only a small handful after the ammunition cans ran out, by then Gabriel had ventured farther around the vehicles in search of more weapons and ammunition. He found six more M4 rifles, a 9mm Beretta M9 semi-automatic with nine empty magzines, two .12 guage Mossberg 590 shotguns, five 9mm Glock-19 semi-automatics with four magazines per weapon, six knives, a folding E-tool and four M67 hand grenades that he dragged all the way back to the Humvee.

After eating some more junk food from his bag to get more room in it for magazines, Gabriel had also found an assault vest sitting in another unmarked sedan, along with a Kelvar vest in a cop car and some riot gear sitting in the back of a van that he put on underneath everything else. Pretty much dressed head to toe in various types of body armor and Kevlar, Gabriel also found a walkie-talkie before he truged back to the Humvee, the only one without a turret and with no dead bodies trapped inside them.

He nearly had a heart attack when he was walking past a police cruiser and an infected individual jumped up from the backseat, face pressed against the glass with an inhuman snarl plastered over it's face as it tried breaking the glass out with its own head, but due to the fact it was a rather large male with handcuffs on made it difficult for it to gain much momentum, but it had startled him so bad he pulled the trigger on the rifle he was armed with and put three rounds onto the side of a fire turck as the infected let out a wail. Gabriel swung the rifle around until it lined up on the infected's head and fired a short burst through the window, watching the head vanish in a spray of blood and bits of brain matter as he turned and ran for the Humvee loaded with all of his purloined weapons and food as a loud howling wail wrought the night air.

He dove inside the vehicle just as he saw the first of many shadows pour in from every direction, uncaring how loud he slammed the door shut as the howling continued, answered by dozens of other calls that were equally bloodcurlding and terrifying as Gabriel slid off the seat and sat on the floor, rifle between his legs as the sounds of pounding feet filled the air, the occasional bump and scuffle of something striking a metal surface as shadows flickered past the windows. His grip tightened on the rifle as something scratched at the windows of the Humvee he was hinding in, not making a sound, as he could hear the grunts, moans, harsh wheezing of air forced through dead lungs and snarls of infected outside the vehicle as time passed by like sand pouring through an hourglass, for a long time Gabriel didn't even move or breath through his mouth as he sat hunkered down behind the front seat of the Humvee, afraid at the slightest nosie thousands would come running to this vehicle and rip it apart, a fear that good reason because he had seen it happen before.

After awhile, he nodded off to sleep, too many unanswered questions caroaming around inside his head, head tucked on top of his knees, several loaded weapons within reach and he fell alseep after several hours by in a disturbed sense of sleep.

[jrswanson1]

Very good! I'm really liking this. One nitpick, Glocks don't have safeties.

Jim

[Bearcat]

Very good! I'm really liking this. One nitpick, Glocks don't have safeties.

Jim

I was gonna say the same. However, some police departments demanded external safeties on glocks and actually got them.

[Dark Angel]

Moar

[golem3]

Another good beginning. Can't wait for more.

[FIDO]

Hey I graduated from MCRD today, earned the title of Untied States Marine, so I'll be busting out another chapter installment sometime tomorrow or the day after, driving 2,500 miles in 4-6 days.

Good to be back...

[Sheriff McClelland]

Hey I graduated from MCRD today, earned the title of Untied States Marine, so I'll be busting out another chapter installment sometime tomorrow or the day after, driving 2,500 miles in 4-6 days.

Good to be back...

Congratulations Marine

Thank you !

Btw , moar is better

[Laager]

Senpi Fi Devil Dog!

[FIDO]

Now what was I supposed to do whenever I post on the forum....

Oh yeah, got to give a bunch of motivated fans, another chapter!

Wait one....



Midnight Ride by the Midnight Riders
“One bad man…”

Shadows and fleeting shapes were blurred at the edges of his vision as he fought for breath and willed his body to keep moving as fast as he could, but the darkness was closing in around, getting closer as rotting flesh reached for him from the blanket of darkness all around him. There was nowhere too run and nowhere to hide, he couldn’t go on and couldn’t take out all of them, he noticed the weapon in his hand took the intaitive to put it next to his head and pull the trigger.

Gabriel snapped awake at that moment of his nightmare, disoriented and confused about where he was for several minutes until the dim interior of the vehicle came back to him and he remembered how and when he had gotten there. Grabbing the nearest weapon, a Glock-19 with a full magazine loaded into it as he slowly peeked over the edge of the windows, which were a dull crimson from all the dried blood stuck on the glass. As far as he could tell, nothing was really out there, no infected he could see at least as he lifted his head higher to see farther away to see in any infected where nearby.

If any of them were within about 100 feet he would have to worry about them noticing him, beyond that they didn’t really do much so he wasn’t worried when he counted about fifty of them scattered around down the far end of the street next to an overturned Greyhound bus that looked like a butcher shop had just got done slaughtering every occupant of the bus. There was another dozen scattered around within 50 feet of the Humvee that would be the first ones to notice him the second he stepped outside of the relative safety of the armored vehicle he was currently hiding in. He had a choice to either stay inside the safety of the vehicle, out of sight and out of mind or he could make a run for it to the nearest building and fear the risk of having every single infected within hearing distance, about 150 that he could see and no doubt there was more hanging around.

His legs were cramped up and numb, therefore worthless for the kind of sprinting and running he would need in order to get away in the event he was seen and therefore considered lunch, so the run and gun option was out for the count, he knew better since he had dealt with these things before.

He glanced at the weapons and ammunition stacked on the backseat and decided to see exactly what he had to work with in the event he would have to move, it wasn’t a matter if, it was just a matter of when. Placing the grenades out of the way in the front driver seat because he needed more room, Gabriel picked up the handguns and empty magazines and put them in the front passenger seat before grabbing the first M16A4 that did not have a magazine loaded and checked the bottom of the stock to get out the cleaning kit he knew was inside because he heard it rattle around when he had picked up the rifle. After opening the lid and dumped out the contents, revealing a canvas bag with three cleaning rods, a T-handle rod, a Christmas tree, an all-purpose cleaning brush and a small plastic bottle of golden liquid.

It took fifteen seconds to remove the upper and lower receiver and break down the charging handle and bolt carrier group, another minute to slowly take apart the bolt carrier group and prepare the all-purpose brush for scrubbing as he applied a generous amount of gun oil onto the bristles of the brush and began vigorously scrubbing the little parts and every surface he saw, mostly removing a fine coat of carbon off the weapon, which told him that someone had already put the weapon to good use before it had been discarded. Using the all-purpose brush to apply an healthy coat of oil in the magazine well, trigger mechanism and buffer spring, Gabriel cast glances over the bottom edges of the windows to see it had attracted the attention of any infected.

After putting the weapon back together after giving it a hasty scrub down, Gabriel racked a full magazine into the weapon, charged the weapon and set in against the back of the driver seat before reach for another rifle.y

Once all of the weapons had been cleaned and checked for additional cleaning gear, he took some candy and bottled water out of the bag and made sure he was well hydrated and well fed before he started flexing his legs to work out the kinks in the cramped confines of the vehicle for several minutes. It took awhile to get his legs to wake up and not feel like they were about to fall off anymore as he went back and counted all of the loaded magazines he had.

Fifty-seven fully loaded magazines with another ten empty magazines were all that he had, that and a meager pile of .12 gauge shotgun shells in 00-buckshot and last, but not least was the rounds he had in 9mm. Compared to what he had been like back at Cascade Falls, he was heavily armed and dangerous, but he was somewhere in the middle of a nearby city that wasn’t far from Cascade Falls.

Across one of the nearby squad cars were the letters BENARD, and the name clicked in his mind, he was about seventy miles from Cascade Falls in a city with a population of 17,500 residents and it was one of the primary places everyone in Cascade Falls had been heading for when things started getting crazy back in the early days. No surprise he would be here, there was only one real road leading from Cascade Falls to Benard unless you followed the train tracks or could navigate the four by four trails that were trekked by the few hardy souls that were rumored to run between the two cities.

Benard might as well been Hometown, USA for all anyone ever really knew about, it was largely suburb and rural oriented with a sprawling downtown district of hardware stores, shopping centers, auto body shops, co-ops and a tight community where everyone either knew of each other or were good neighbors with each other. From what Gabriel remembered about Benard was that if he was in front of the hospital, then there was a school, CVS and a Starbucks within walking distance, beyond that there was National Guard Regimental Station where the state held the primary National Guard Head Quarters simply because it was the largest available. The police department was halfway across town as well, the fire department wasn’t far from the hospital, it was near the center of the city come to think of it, but there was also an airport on the outskirts of Benard as well.

From the way things looked it seemed like a majority of the infected from Cascade Falls had made it too Benard and pretty much destroyed the city in a real bad way.

People had fled Cascade Falls in a mass exodus when mobs of infected were roaming around tearing apart people, most of them to get killed in the early days were the police officers, reinforcements from nearby towns and cities that had been called in to quell the “riot” that had been going on. A majority of everyone had been sent to Benard and had been told to stay in the city limits, something about some kind of quarantine action by the Army near the outskirts of the city, either way everyone thought that going to the town over would solve their problems.

Outside it looked no better than Cascade Falls had looked, if anything it made Cascade Falls look as if a horror movie had been filmed there, Benard looked like a psychopath had been set loose on a nursing home with a wood chipper.

Now it seemed as good as time as ever to move, from the sign of things going on outside it looked like about half of them had moved away, obviously intent of looking for something to feed on, and most of them had moved away from his hiding spot.

He kept stretching his legs, working the feeling back into them, keeping his body below the windows so he wouldn’t give himself away because the infected were good at two things, tearing apart people and checking out anything they seemed to think would get them food. Most of the time it was a human shadow, a shout or loud noise such as a door slamming or gunshot that got them riled up, but for the most part they ignored flashing lights, but if it made noise, then it would be problematic.

Gabriel tucked the spare weapons underneath the backseat, leaving out only one M16A4 rifle, the Glock-19 and one .12 gauge Mossberg 590, along with all of the loaded magazines, the E-tool, two bayonets and all of the grenades. He slipped magazines with the brass to the bottom of the pouches for faster reloading, jerry-rigged as many magazine pouches onto the mishap collection of body armor and web harnesses, however there was still over half of the magazines he placed inside the gym bag with the other sixteen bottles of water and countless bags of chips, candy bars and whatever else he had yet to inventory. He took another cleaning kit out of another rifle so he would have a spare in case he parts of the one secured inside the rifle he was armed with before he looked for the best avenue of escape.

Highway 73 ran right through Benard in the direction of William’s Crossing, it cut across a small part of the city rather that run through the entire length, it was the second fastest way out of Benard, all he would have to do would be to get the five miles to William’s Crossing, either by vehicle or on foot, it didn’t matter, but all Gabriel knew that it wasn’t a good idea to stick around when the time to leave was ripe for the picking.

Now the only problem was how he was going to cross town, about ten blocks from what he could guess if he remembered right, from where he was he could stop by a couple smaller stores and see what he could find for a longer road trip.

Only about ten were within 100 feet of the Humvee, a good thing because they were all on the other side of the street he intended to transverse to get inside the vet clinic half a block away because it had a nice chain link fence all the way around it and it appeared to be chained shut with no infected activity inside. There weren’t any signs of barricading or scattered corpses scattered around the building and none of the infected were showing any signs of interest in the building, which meant it had been largely ignored and that would be the place he would want to go.

Exiting the vehicle was as simple as opening the door, dropping both feet onto the pavement, slinging the gym bag over his left shoulder and the shotgun over his right before gently closing the door with a soft metallic clunk and crouching behind the bulk of the Humvee to keep something between himself and the infected he could see.

It was like a game of leapfrog, going from one descript vehicle to another, stopping long enough to catch his breath, scan his surroundings for any signs of having alerted any infected, gauge the distance between his current staging place and where the next place would be as he got closer to the vet clinic.

Rifle butt tucked into his shoulder, finger off the trigger and the safety was engaged, but he had a round chambered and kept his thumb on the selector switch to go from safe to semi in a split second, having checked the front sight tip to make sure it was zeroed out and the O-2 sight was up. Gabriel systematically made sure he took notice of everything as he reached his next staging point, a pair of deep blue postal boxes sitting on the edge of the curb halfway to the next point of concealment, a large farm truck with a bunch of steel pipes spilled across the road.

The shattered store front windows and alleyways made him nervous as he passed by them, anything could be lurking around where he couldn’t see it before it was too late and he needed about ten sets of eyes to cover every direction as he sprinted across the street to the farm truck, which was sitting right in front of the vet clinic.

It was then he heard the noise, a faint sound that was like a mosquito buzzing around his ear until it took on a deeper pitched whap-whap sound and steadily got louder until he could pin point the direction it was coming from seconds before he saw the source of the noise.

Three helicopters were flying overhead in a wedge formation, great big ones that looked like Blackhawks or something similar as they kept right on flying in a straight line over Benard, nearly right over the top of him as he craned his head around to watch them begin a banking left turn, nearly on side as he could clearly make out the doors were open and airmen were inside. It was then he noticed that they were armed with what appeared with light machine guns as the helicopters finished the banking turn and started coming back. Gabriel nearly stood up and started waving like he was going to be rescued as he realized he heard a clatter behind him and had time to turn his head to see what had made the noise.

Crawling across the scattered steel pipes was an infected, missing both legs and a great deal of its’ left arm as it continued to crawl towards him, nearly within five feet before he pivoted his upper body, leveled the muzzle of the rifle on its’ head and squeezed the trigger twice, watching the disfigured head explode like a melon before he turned to look back at the helicopters approaching his location and fast.

Jumping over the dead infected he had just dispatched, Gabriel ran full tilt at the chain link fence, tossing the gym bag ahead of him as he hit the fence running, throwing one leg over and dropping over onto his feet without letting go of the rifle as he snatched the gym bag and dashed for the vet clinic as the helicopters flew directly overhead. Just as he figured, it had been locked and left as he smashed the glass in with the rifle butt, reached inside and unlocked the door just as the first helicopter flew back over, tail boom lowered with the nose up, meaning the pilot was about to “park” the bird in midair and stop for awhile.

He got inside and locked the door behind him as he streaked across the lobby and dove behind the front counter, bringing up the rifle over the top of the counter as he did so and dropping the bag off his shoulder so he could have better control of his weapon as he watched the helicopter come to a midair stop and begin to turn around to face the vet clinic, less than three hundred feet away. Even at the distance and the angle, Gabriel could see both the pilot and co-pilot sitting in the front behind a layer of bulletproof Pexiglass and he could see that there wasn’t any guns on the front of the bird, a minor comfort as he saw one of the other two making a holding pattern farther away, no doubt ready to light the building up the moment any hostile action took place.

They made no signs of attempting a rescue, in fact they seemed to be waiting to see what he was going to do as he flipped the O-2 sight back down to the peep sight so if he needed to he could make a farther shot, not that he was going to do much to a helicopter with a rifle, but damn if he was going down without a fight.


[What do you all think so far? Bad? So-So? Good? Need feedback, oh and I'll be recovering from the night in Las Vegas and we got two days to drive 2,100 miles so it might be a couple days before I get another post on]

[Manoos]

I'm loving the tone of this story. Keep going, I really want to see what else happens. A bit of background would be nice, how does he know so much about military type weapons for example?

[Laager]

I've enjoyed it so far, looking forward to MOAR........

[Snapshot7.62]

Very good, i'm liking it.

[DTyra]

Looking good and I'm looking for more.

[Catshooter]

I like it, your writting is easy to fall into.

Twelve gauge is written this way: 12. Not .12, just FYI. The decimal point is used for a caliber, gauge uses no decimal point.

Watch the weight he is slinging around. 57 loaded mags alone is a good amount, now add everything else in. The scene where he grabs it and runs into the clinic works as it's not too far. Why didn't he just drive off in one of the vehicles?

We need moar now please.


Cat

[swab]

Great so far. The only beef I have is the safety on the glock.. Since they have none

[Sheriff McClelland]

Great so far. The only beef I have is the safety on the glock.. Since they have none

I've never seen one first hand but I did find this photo & reference info .
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2009 ... mb-safety/

[swab]

Whoops, lol. I only own a G35 and have shot a G22. My bad.

[FIDO]

Daaammmmmmnnnn. It has been a long freaking time I've been here, finally broke down and bought myself a new toy, granted internet access is spotty at best, but I'm working on the next chapter.
Considering that I am taking FROC (Field Radio Operator Course) I'm going to be mentioning a bunch of gizmos and such, so yeah....
Working on conducting some more research as not to fu*k things up, it has been ssssooooooooo damn long.



Great to be back. Expect a new chapter by tomorrow the latest.

[FIDO]

Don’t Fear The Reaper by the Blue Oyster Cult
“Ten thousand men and women every day…”

For several tense moments Gabriel stared back at the helicopter, wondering why it was just sitting there watching him, no way was it coming for a rescue or going to help, it was just watching him, unaware of the undead swarming below it in the street as the other two were still in some kind of holding pattern not far away. Something was off about the entire thing, Gabriel adjusted his aim so it was several inches lower than the top of the pilots’ head, no doubt the Pexiglass would easily defeat the 5.56mm round, but there was still a hope.

Now the bird swung sideways, parallel to the building as Gabriel rested his sights on the machine gunner, who seemed more interested in looking down as another crew member was reaching for something out of sight.

Let them take the first shot, Gabriel felt his finger tense on the trigger, making a mental note that gunner was wearing a bulletproof vest, helmet, hazmat gear and a safety harness while the helicopter crab-walked sideways through the air straight toward the building, causing Gabriel to hunker down lower to keep the gunner in his sights as he slowly applied pressure to the trigger.

Outside there had to be hundreds of those dead fuckers massed up outside and that was exactly why he had avoided making any kind of noise, it was like ringing the dinner bell, not that Gabriel was overly concerned about them at the moment.

Something bright yellow and large detached itself from the helicopter, thrown out by the other crew member as it landed within the fenced in parking lot with several bounces before laying still, it was followed by another two bright yellow boxes before the helicopter increased power and pulled away. Gabriel watched as the helicopter masterfully moved back down the street just above the rooftops, peppering the horde with several short bursts of light machine gun fire that had little to no effect, but the horde was “following” the helicopter away from the building, going as far as settling over the hospital for several minutes, firing ineffective bursts, dropping a few flares and weaving this way and that for several minutes before leaving.

Gabriel wiped the sweat off his brow and cautiously moved closer to the door he had just broken into to peek out at the boxes laying several feet apart from one another within the safety of the parking lot. Each one was a thick plastic case about three feet square, painted a bright yellow and had several handles on them, if they had gone through all that trouble to drop bombs on him, then the joke was on him.

With every single undead for miles chasing after the growingly distant helicopters, Gabriel slipped outside to the cases and reached the first one.

It was heavier than he thought as he slung the rifle behind his back, picked up the case with both hands and jogged back to the door he left open to stash it inside before returning for the next one. They were all the same weight if not off by a few pounds as he closed the door behind him, locked it and dragged over the furniture sitting in the lobby in front of it to erect some sort of formidable barricade, pausing every so often listen in case the helicopters were returning.

After checking the rest of the building for any possible threat, Gabriel found nothing as he dragged all three cases into the back office that had a steel door and a desk he pushed in front it before examining the cases.

They were secured with some extensive clasps that came free after a little exertion and the first case he opened had five simple boxes wrapped extensively in foam padding and plastic wrapping to make it shock proofed as possible as he quickly unpacked each box one by one to see exactly why they had given him this stuff rather than rescue him.

Or kill him.

It took him a minute to recognize a night vision optic for a helmet mount, it was stored in the first box with four packets of AA batteries, the mounting bracket and lens cap, AN/NVS-14 across the top as Gabriel dug the helmet out of the case and spent several minutes through trial and error mounting the device properly and figuring out how to adjust it so he could see out of it properly. After turning off the lights and practicing with it, it took him no time at all to learn he had absolutely no depth perception, couldn’t see anything closer than a foot from his face and it needed fine tuning to see the contrast at different distances.

Setting aside the NVS-14 still mounted on the helmet, he dug out a set of powerful binoculars that would no doubt come in handy as he opened the next box to reveal something that looked like an oversized palm pilot.

After inserting the batteries and turning it on, Gabriel was just about to set it aside when the screen flashed with the word URGENT as he hit the Next button. For a moment it simply remained blank until the following flashed across the screen that had Gabriel suddenly wary.

Is this unit operational?

Gabriel hit Yes and waited for the next message.

Is this Gabriel?

For nearly a minute he could do nothing except stare at the screen trying to figure out what was going and what he should do next before he hit Yes and waited for an answer.

Hello Gabriel, you gave us a scare when you left the safety of the truck, should have waited for us to help you.

It took him a minute to figure out how to type in a response, so he made it brief Who r u?

The screen was blank for a several seconds before the next message appeared, Follow the printed instructions in the case and you will soon have your answer Gabriel, just know that we are here to help you.
Gabriel opened the other cases until he found the printed instructions laminated in plastic and began to follow the instructions to the letter.

To wit, he hooked up the Motorola headset to the Iridium satellite phone, turned it on and punched in the six digit code that had the preset number and waited ninety seconds for the connection to be established before the ring tone kicked on and he waited for whoever it was to pick up.

“Hello?” Gabriel waited several seconds before the speaker on the other end of the line, obviously male from the sound, spoke again, “Are you there Gabriel?”

How do you know my name? Who the Hell are you? What the fuck is going on? Gabriel thought to himself before inhaling deeply and answering, “Speaking.”

“Ah, excellent Gabriel, now listen carefully, as I’m sure you have a lot of questions that need answering so I’ll start at the beginning,” the voice paused for a few seconds before continuing on, “right now you in the middle of the quarantine zone spanning about two hundred square miles, it has Carson Falls, Benard and three other cities surrounded so escaping the area will not happen because there are a lot of guys sitting around the edge of the quarantine zone with guns ready to shoot anything that moves, with me so far?”

“Yeah, why are you helping me and how do you know where I am?” Gabriel waited.

“Well you see Gabriel you are the only person ever encountered that has lived this long with a bite, we’ve been monitoring you since you were in the isolation ward at the hospital, but something went wrong.” Gabriel didn’t have to ask what went wrong because he had a pretty good idea what had gone wrong.

“How?”

“Simple, we had control of the cameras in the isolation ward and the rest of the hospital, surprised that you made it out alive to be honest and we have a plan to get you out of harm’s way because let’s face it Gabriel, you are very important to the rest of humanity.”

Slightly shocked at the mention of him being important to the survival of humanity, Gabriel sat down and took several deep breaths.

“What the Hell are you talking about?”

“What I am trying to say is that you are the only person we have ever come across that has survived infection, we watched you on live video feed wondering when you would turn, but instead you have lasted longer than anyone we’ve ever seen and rather than show signs of succumbing to the infection, we believe that you have a natural immunity against this infection and we need you.”

“For what?” Gabriel patted the pistol sitting on the desk as he adjusted the volume on the headset.

“Because the quarantine will not allow us to simply pick you up and take you too safety, we’d actually have to shoot you should you attempt to get passed the barriers in place to prevent escaping the containment zone, we have an alternative method to help you and get what we need, which is you alive and well to a safe location we have set up for you not far away.”

“Why are you helping me?” Gabriel waited several seconds before he got an answer.

“Because the fate of humanity rest with you Gabriel.”

“What do I call you?” Gabriel asked, needing to have some kind of name.

“Call me Mike and I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship, don’t you Gabriel?”

“Whatever you say Mike, whatever you say.”

[Lurch]

Glad you're back, now Moar!